Captain Ahab and Metaphors
by DeviRose
Summary: This is my oral report for a college class.


Erin Latta September 8th, 2014 Captain Ahab & His Metaphors

Captain Ahab is the captain of the Pequod, and is also the one who wants to find and seek revenge on the whale, Moby Dick.

Ahab is a very tragic character, he was married to a woman, but had to depart on a whaling ship. He has a son he's never seen. He becomes ill with fever after having his leg taken off by the infamous Moby Dick, and has a crazed obsession with the whale. Despite being insane mentally, he is sane towards his own crew.

However, once the ship is far from the isle of Nantucket, Ahab reveals to his crew the real reason why they are there (which is of course, hunting and killing Moby Dick). Almost all of the crew agrees, except Starbuck, who quotes that the act is "ungodly"

This is how Ahab is described by Captain Peleg:

**"He is a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; Doesn't speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye be forewarned; Ahab's above the common; Ahab's been in colleges, as well as 'mong the cannibals, been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier, stronger foes than whales. His lance! Aye, the keenest and surest that out of all our isle*!" **(*Nantucket)

Ahab's character and name comes from the Bible (1 Kings 21) The story is that there is a king named Ahab, and he wants a vineyard from a man named Naboth, which Naboth won't give to him. Then, Queen Jezebel falsely accuses Naboth of a crime he didn't do, which ends up with Naboth getting stoned to death and King Ahab owning his vineyard. But after he receives the vineyard, a man called Elijah (there is a character named Elijah in chapter 19 of Moby Dick), says that there is a prophecy that King Ahab's blood will end up in the same place as Naboth's.

But how do King Ahab and Captain Ahab relate? They both desire something that isn't good for either of them to have. The sentence "He is a grand, ungodly, god-like man…" shows Captain Ahab's monarch-like status on the ship.

Ahab is not the only captain to have his leg severed off by Moby Dick. There is one point in the novel where he meets another whaling captain who has also lost his leg to the whale. However, the captain differs from Ahab as he has come to not mind his missing limb and realizes that Moby Dick is a god-like creature that is too powerful to creature, who in Ahab's eyes, will be able to die with his harpoon. Captain Ahab is too obsessed to kill Moby rather than realize Moby Dick is just an animal and is acting out as self-preservation and protection.

Ishmael discusses Ahab's madness this way:

** "****All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby-Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."**

In Ishmael's opinion (or maybe from hearing things Ahab has spoken), Ahab appears to be carrying rage and hate from the human race. He also appears to blame Moby Dick for all the pain he has caused upon his life, and has made him have constant battles with his inner conscience and thinks nothing else than just vengeance for the white whale. This may show that Ahab has either forgotten or no longer cared about other things or things that have happened to him in the past.

Here is a conversation hosted between Ahab and Starbuck, who thinks hunting Moby Dick is not worth it.

**"Vengeance on a dumb brute!" cried Starbuck, "that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous."******

**"Hark ye yet again – the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event – in the living act, the undoubted deed – there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me."**

Starbuck claims that striking upon the animal that is not capable of evil is not only cruel, but also a sin against God; however, Ahab has a malice afterthought and disagrees.

**Metaphors and Similes referenced in Moby Dick:**

**"Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels about as cozy as he would standing on a bull's horns."**

** "****The whale's jets resembled some thousand cheerful chimneys."**

**"The waters flashed for an instant like heaps of fountains****and then sank in a shower of flakes, leaving the circling surface creamed like new milk."**

** "The great whale flung the chips of the boat like nutmeg in punch."**


End file.
